Mithridates

I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line, All between that works or grows, Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat; Give me cantharids to eat; From air and ocean bring me foods, From all zones and altitudes;--

From all natures, sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame: Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and reptile, be my game.

Ivy for my fillet band; Blinding dog-wood in my hand; Hemlock for my sherbet cull me, And the prussic juice to lull me; Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.

Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it, As you spin a cherry. O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! O all you virtues, methods, mights, Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud! Hither! take me, use me, fill me, Vein and artery, though ye kill me!

TO J.W.

Set not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.

Set not thy foot on graves; Nor seek to unwind the shroud Which charitable Time And Nature have allowed To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.

Set not thy foot on graves; Care not to strip the dead Of his sad ornament, His myrrh, and wine, and rings,

His sheet of lead, And trophies buried: Go, get them where he earned them when alive; As resolutely dig or dive.

Life is too short to waste In critic peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand: 'T will soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!